In August 1947, when independence was granted to the former imperial domain of British India, it was partitioned into two countries – India and Pakistan. India had been the largest possession of the British and a subject of the British Crown since 1858, when the East India Company’s reign had been brought to an end in the wake of the great uprising and revolt against the Company rule. The granting of self-rule to the Indians was heavily debated since the early 1900’s in the public sphere, the early results of which were the Indian Councils Act of 1909 and the Government of India Act of 1919. It was the 1919 Act which introduced diarchy and allowed Indian to enter provincial governments (Indian ministers were chosen from provincial legislatures). The 1935 Act ended this for provincial autonomy. So maybe the sentence should read “The Act of 1919 allowed Indians to enter the provincial governments, and the Act of 1935 granted these governments executive autonomy. It was planned that British India would be granted dominion status, i.e. self-government supervised by the Crown. If a majority of the princely states chose to join the scheme, India would have a confederate structure with powerful provinces and princely states and a weak center in charge of defence, foreign relations and currency. This scheme never came into effect because the majority of the princely states refused to accept the 1935 Act and be part of the dominion. Provincial elections were held in British India in 1937. When war was declared between Britain and Germany in 1939, the British government declared India’s involvement in the war without consulting any Indian leaders. To protest against this, the Congress ministries resigned. They demanded full independence in return for Indian cooperation in the war. Under pressure from the US government, the British sent the Cripps Mission to India in 1942 to secure full support and cooperation in the war against Germany by trying to negotiate better terms for transfer of power. But the pre-conditions of the Mission were not accepted by the Congress and the Muslim League, both of whom had different priorities and outcomes in mind. The failure of the Cripps Mission led to the Congress launching the Quit India movement demanding full independence from British rule. On the morning the movement was to be launched, the Congress leaders were put behind bars until almost the end of war. In 1945, the Labour Party came to power in Britain and pledged to grant independence to India. Their plan was developed on the basis of the 1935 Act. Elections were held in all the provinces of British India the results of which were that the Congress won in seven out of eleven provinces and the Muslim League won all the seats reserved for Muslims. In 1946, the British Government sent the Cabinet Mission to India to secure arrangements for a peaceful transfer of power. The Cabinet Mission proposed a confederation as previously detailed in the 1935 Act. It also proposed that provinces could group themselves into regions which would decide how power would be shared amongst them. Three regions were proposed, one comprising the North West provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, and the North West Frontier Province, the second comprising Madras, UP, Central Provinces, Bombay, Bihar & Orissa and the third comprising Assam and Bengal. It was proposed that the provincial legislatures would elect representatives to a Constituent Assembly which would frame the Constitution of independent India. Although the Congress rejected the proposal for an interim government, they decided to join the Constituent Assembly in order to help frame the Constitution of independent India. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, declared 16 August 1946 as Direct Action Day as a show of force of support from the Muslim community for a separate Nation. Riots spread through the cities of Calcutta and Bombay resulting in the death of approximately 5000-10,000 people with 15,000 left wounded. On 9 th December 1946 the Muslim League which had earlier accepted the proposals of the Cabinet Mission now withdrew its support on the ground that there was no guarantee for proper safeguards of the rights of the Muslim minority in the Assembly. The demand for a separate nation for Muslims had been raised by various Muslim leaders in the previous decades, most famously by Allama Iqbal at a Muslim League conference at Allahabad in 1930 where he articulated the idea of a Muslim nation within India. The term “Pak-Stan” had been coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali in the 1930’s while he was studying at Cambridge University. On March 23 th , 1940 at a meeting of the Muslim League in Lahore, Jinnah had endorsed such a demand though without naming Pakistan. The Proposal of the Muslim League resolution, to unite the Muslim majority provinces and carve out a separate nation was resisted by the Congress at the outset. At that time, an interim government was in charge with the Congress and Muslim League sharing ministries and Nehru acting as the de-facto Prime Minister. But soon the arrangement broke down and Lord Mountbatten put forth the proposal to partition India using the three regions as had been suggested by the Cabinet Mission. The first Partition Scheme was outlined in April 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru was against the idea of Partition itself. The revised scheme was sent to London and came back with the approval of the British Cabinet. On June 4, the scheme to Partition India was announced by Mountbatten and endorsed in speeches by Nehru and Jinnah on the radio. The Partition scheme as announced was largely in line with the proposals of the Cabinet Mission. The North-West region comprising Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province was as proposed by the Cabinet Mission. The Eastern region was redrawn without Assam or the North East provinces. East Bengal and the adjoining Sylhet district would be part of Pakistan. Partition came as a great shock to Mahatma Gandhi but the Congress leadership under Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel had accepted the proposition. However, the question of the final boundary was still undecided. The two largest provinces Punjab and Bengal had only a marginal superiority of Muslims over Non-Muslims – 53% to 47%. It was decided, therefore that the two provinces would be divided down the middle and the electoral register would be used to apportion some districts to Pakistan and the others to India. The drawing of the boundary proved to be extremely contentious causing fear, uncertainty and widespread death and destruction. Cyril Radcliffe, KC, a barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, London was put in charge of drawing up the boundary with the help of local advisors in Punjab and Bengal. The negotiations amongst the leaders proved a nightmare for the thousands of families who suddenly found themselves uprooted in a land they had inhabited for generations. Law and order broke down and there was large scale massacre and looting as families left their homeland to trudge across the new,arbitrarily drawn borders. Women were abducted, raped, mutilated and killed along with children, both born and unborn. Families abandoned their ancestral properties and crossed the borders, forced to find a new life as refugees. In the Punjab and Bengal, refugees moved from each side to the other, in search of safety. Many Muslim families left from UP and Bihar to end up as Muhajirs (refugees) in Karachi. The Hindus of Sindh arrived in Gujarat and Bombay. The Partition of India was one of the most defining events in the history of the Indian subcontinent.With no accurate accounts of how many died or lost their homes, estimates suggest that perhaps up to 20 million people were affected by the partition and somewhere between 200,000 – 1 million lost their lives. Yet, several decades after the event, there was a severe lacuna that no museum or memorial existed anywhere in the world to remember all those millions. It is their untold stories which the Partition Museum records and narrates.